Municipal Park Lake Number One

On one warm weekend in the summer when I was 7 years old, I slipped and fell on a spillway at the Municipal Park reservoir and knocked my front tooth out. My tooth punctured my tongue and my lower lip and I also had a big gash in my chin. I was with my 2 cousins (Richard and Benny-''Tootie'') at the time and gave my cousin, Richard my tooth. Richard put it in his pocket but unfortunately he had a hole in the pocket and the tooth is probably still somewhere

in Municipal Park. We had been playing in the park since about 10 in the morning and I fell around 3 in the afternoon. We were standing and trying to decide what to do (I was mostly crying loudly) when we looked out and saw my Mom's

car driving down a road about 200 yards away. We all ran for the car. I think the first thing my Mom said was, ''Oh Stephen, What have you done?'' Before taking me to the hospital, she took me home and made me take a bath! My Mom took me to the Mobile Infirmary emergency room. At that time my sister was either nursing or attending nursing school in Mobile. I think she must have made some calls and got Dr. DeBakey to come down to the emergency room to sew up

my lip. I remember that someone place a green cloth over my face with a 3 or 4 inch circle in the middle of it. I received the most painful shot that I had ever had but soon all of the pain was gone. I could look down my nose and

see them working on me and I remember how funny it felt to see them sewing me up and pulling on my face without really hurting. It was just a kind of pinching sensation. I got stitches in my lower lip and chin. We went to the dentist the following Monday and the dentist told my Mom if we still had the tooth he could put it back in and there was a chance that it would heal. But of course, by this time my tooth had been lost. I got a temporary bridge and in the

next few weeks an ''alleged'' permanent bridge. I say ''alleged'' because between the time I was 7 and 12 years old I either lost or broke the bridge a dozen times. Says Steve Cahoon